A Wish List for WikiLeaks
In case Al Qaeda, its cohorts, and their sponsors lack for summer reading, WikiLeaks — as we all know by now — has just tipped out onto the web a trove of classified U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan. As far as there’s an upside to this, some of the concerns described in the documents may help focus attention on the problem of nuclear-armed Pakistan’s double-dealing in fostering Islamist terrorism, while receiving huge handouts from the U.S. in its role as an ally. Tunku Varadarajan has an impassioned piece on this in the Daily Beast, and the New York Times weighs in on the same theme.
But in the larger picture, such leaks are routinely cherry-picked by the U.S. media, and in turn by the world media, for anything damning to the U.S. Never mind the context, or the terrorist assaults and continuing threats that have impelled America into this war. Not only will America’s enemies now enjoy a chance to cull the leaked documents for any useful intelligence, but odds are that this huge data dump will become the latest ammo in the hands of the Blame-America-First contingent.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is right now all over the media, explaining that this posting of tens of thousands of classified U.S. documents is all about “transparency” and ending the abuses of war. In a video clip posted on the web site of the Guardian, Assange pats himself on the back that “It is the work of good journalism to take on powerful abusers.”
Amen, Mr. Assange. So when does WikiLeaks get serious about that noble mission? Leaking American secrets is no great trick – it’s a regular event; staple fare at The New Yorker, The New York Times, or pick-your-source. America is where the in-house conversations of Gen. Stanley McChrystal are reported in Rolling Stone, and “Top Secret America” is featured on page one — with interactive search functions — by the Washington Post.
What’s rather more difficult, for those aspiring to confer transparency upon abuses of power, is to get hold of the document troves of America’s enemies – a collection of tyrants and terrorists who respond to unwanted leaks not simply by trying to spin, deny, or appease, but by threatening, jailing or murdering anyone discovered disclosing secrets to the world public. That makes it a lot more difficult to pry documents from their archives; but it also means that any success could be of extraordinary value.
If Assange is serious about his ethical mission, here’s a wish list for some additional leaks that might just bring more balance to the WikiLeaks pursuit of transparency:
1) The Iranian files. Lots of scope here for greater transparency. Can WikiLeaks bring us the internal correspondence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? The files of the Iranian nuclear program? The motherlode of records that presumably exists, somewhere, on the provision of money and weapons to Iran’s terrorist clients such as Hamas and Hezbollah?
2) The Taliban/Al Qaeda Recent Hard Drives. We’re seeing a heaping portion of American war documents. The Taliban and Al Qaeda may be less prolific in their record-keeping, but they do keep records. Remember that computer hard-drive the Wall Street Journal came up with in Kabul in 2001? When will WikiLeaks bring us the 2010 data dump of terrorist hard drives galore? If the idea is to expose the realities of this war, where’s the rest of the picture?
3) The Kim Jong Il Chronicles. Not easy, granted. But North Korea is a festering threat to global security, dealing missiles and nuclear technology into the Middle East. While this is a hard nut to crack, there are North Korean defectors out there, and leads worth following for those with the resources to go all-out pursuing documentation. Fascinating items have turned up here and there over the few years, in congressional investigations and reports by private think tanks. Please! — find and show us more.
4) The Network News — and we’re not talking here about Katie Couric. How about a full set of documents on the Syrian-North Korean networks that went into building a clandestine nuclear reactor on the Euphrates? Or recent records of secret communications among China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria and Venezuela that might bring a little more transparency to the underworld of networking — in both weapons and diplomatic games — related to missiles and nuclear proliferation?
Those are just a few obvious suggestions for the wish list, if WikiLeaks is serious about its commitment to exposing abuses of power. Not as easy to get hold of as classified U.S. documents, but of far greater potential value, if the real aim is to expose what ails the modern world.
There was a time when we shot our foreign enemies. Maybe the world is a bit too civilized, nowadays.
The world’s a bit too civilized for you nowadays, Old Guy? Well, perhaps you might like to live in a previous era in which Old Guys didn’t get social security or medicare. Instead, they were preyed upon and got their belongings, livelihoods, property and dignity stolen from them because there were no police or justice system. Yeah, those were the days, right Old Guy?
Old guy is complaining about traitors Mike. That seems to bother you.
Not likely… I have a feeling OLd GUY is a second amendment exerciser and that takes care of those nasty little thugs you you are hoping will try and take what doesn’t belong from them, from an old man, because they are sissies…speaking of which…remember getting old IS NOT for sissies! And as for social security…even with recent downturns and the probaly second economic dip coming soon from failed liberal poilicies and corrupt politicains on both sides of the aisle. I would still be doing better off if all the money I paid into social security would have been invested in the stock market during my lifetime…Government does “produce anything…it just steals and eats our hard work!
wtf?
So you go around stealing thread topics to rant on imagined injustices that your obasocialism will cure?
You’re so wet behind the ears, you don’t realize that before the Welfare State broke up families, old guys were superbly cared for by their homefolks. But truly understanding that fact would destroy your indoctrinated mind.
The Great Society also gave young guys the ability to impregnate young gals, then move on without a backward look. So what? Who needs “family units,” “mother and father”?
But it was imperative that Old People be separated from their families, just in anticipation of the upcoming ObamaCare rationing. If there are no strong family ties then Young People will be more inclined to accept that Old People, having served their purpose, are no longer necessary, therefore expendable.
This has taken half a century to effectuate but it’s all culminating in silly Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” which will decide whether or not any person “deserves” the health care resources available from The State. Of COURSE these aren’t “death panels”; they’re merely compassionate health care panels determining who lives and who dies, and just as importantly, who lives the remainder of their lives in comfort.
But yeah, off topic.
Old Guy stepped on your toe there, Mike?
War is hell…we in the US want to treat it like an etiquette exercise.
Kill the enemy, get it over with..then rebuild, with their money…We are losing the war in the middle east because the enemy has no proper “guide lines” on how they should be fighting, dirty buggers. They are in it to win, our officials will not allow our people to “fight’ a gutter fight and win.
I cannot think of one country that would come over here and say..”now boys, we have to be sure we don’t kill civilians, just the soldiers”, bull!!! They will drop one on us and not care, just pure destruction, ie, twin towers.
Journalists have no place in a war when they benefit our enemy with their information and whining. I hope all the info comes out and we can sort it without too high a price. Pakistan should be cut down. Covert over overt..
“Kill the enemy, get it over with..then rebuild, with their money…”
-What wikileaks has shown us is that didn’t happen. My question is why? If we waited until now to begin prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, i feel it is too late. Bring oyr troops home now.
I’ve been down this path before – Viet Nam. We lost that war ALSO because the pantywaist’s wouldn’t let us fight it. Warriors kill people and break things. That’s war. Some milk will inevitably be spilt. We REALLY try not to, but it happens.
Let the soldiers fight the war or call them home.
The criminal that released the files should be tried by Court’s Martial and punished in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (PS Pantywaist – Death is an option)
It should not be an option, it should be mandatory if found guilty!
From one old soldier to another, had we known what was in The Pentagon Papers years earlier, we’d have saved lots of lives. I remember my dad coming home from nam in 1962 as an adviser. He said that it was a lost cause then. He knew what he was talking about.
Brad Manning will go to jail, but if this spurs Obama to leave Afghanistan, it will make him a savior to more than a few American and other coalition lives.
Even if Julian Assange was evenhanded in his whistle blowing, which he most definitely is not, he has made an ass out of himself with his petulant focus on the US military. He is obviously being paid well, but by whom. If he is going through this exercise for the good of mankind, he would dig into the brutal dictatorships, Chinese environmental degradation and human rights, Brazil, Darfur, Iran and every other pressing world problem with the same gusto. But he’s not. He is paid to focus on the US military by an activist with a grudge. Dot.dot.dot.
I would certainly love to see him jailed in a US military prison.
And Manning and others should be executed.
How about Wikileaks publish the Russian/Soviet documents those defectors (whose names escape me) smuggled West? Or some e-mails, etc. from the global warmists?
[Ed.Note: WikiLeaks did publish some emails from global warmists -- http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/wikileaks-founder-sees-success-in-exposing-global-warming-e-mail/19262305 -- but considering the scale of the global warming global crusade in recent years, one might guess that this barely begins to scratch the surface. How about bringing us collected in-house emails of the United Nations, or China, or the EPA, on this topic? ]
“Or some e-mails, etc. from the global warmists?”
Yeah, they already did that….
Because they are playing for the other side. Wiki-leaks is not about truth, its about being anti-American.
Ding ding ding ding! Post of the day!!!!
Aye, they will release documents that support their world view and they will, like the MSM, suppress documents that do not.
Also morale cowardice I am sure plays a role. The other side plays much rougher.
Where are those 12 million e-mails Karl Rove “lost”?
If we told you, you would finally realize why you have gained so much weight…hhhmmmmm
Okay, you’re one conservative who can’t answer the question. You’re off the list. Thanks for narrowing our search.
“Weeeee haaaaah . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . bwaaaaaaa haaaaa haaaa . . . hoo boy . . .. . . . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . . . . ha ha ha. . .. . . a ha ha ha ha . . . oh . . . . . . . . .” _________________…
Liar.
Gee, I dunno. Where are the documents that Sandy Berger stuffed in his socks and walked out of the National Archives with?
If wikileaks got every single item on your list tomorrow, they’d be published before nightfall. Their value is in the fact that they WILL air anyone’s dirty laundry, be it the Pentagon’s or the University of East Anglia’s. Julian Assange didn’t solicit info to undermine the American military, a member of that military found information that he voluntarily turned over (and in the case of the Iraqi guncam video, information the military said had been ‘lost’).
The soldier didn’t “find” anything. He was given access the documents by virtue of his security clearance. He then proceded to steal them and send (sell?) them to an organization not authorized to see them. He violated the law and should be prosecuted to it’s fullest extent.
Nowhere did I say that the specialist shouldn’t. But at the same time, it’s not evident that Assange or wikileaks committed any crime. But if you’re going to set a precedent that publishing information a government doesn’t like should be criminal, remember that sword cuts both ways. We encourage the exposure of Venzuelan, Iranian, Chinese, etc. abuses, but suddenly become indignant when hoisted on our own petard….
Wikileaks is guilty of receiving stolen government property and unauthorized possession of classified information. Just because the publication of the information is First Ammendment protected doesn’t mean they haven’t committed a crime. I think these leaks can be stopped if the government were to prosecute on this basis.
Bravo Sierra.It is a treasonous act to release classified documents period, by the soldier or WikiLeaks. WL should have returned the documents to the government and spilled the beans on the perp. So, yes, it was a criminal act by WikiLeaks and any and all persons at WikiLeaks should be dealt with accordingly. IF you want to help them then you are guilty of aiding and abetting by law.
That is their “value” is it? That they are above it all?
This hypocritical stance makes them self serving, pomo jerks to me.
As they revealed information helpful to the enemy in a war which I am not above, they are my enemy. They are the enemy of my side. They are spies or traitors in time of war, and should be dealt with in the traditional way.
They are not based in the United States. As such they cannot be traitors to the United States. They kept back 15,000 documents that might have been sensitive. If our countries is unable to self reflect on who we are and what we are doing, then it is all over.
No one would ever ask you if you were serious about your mission of providing greater transparency. It’s quite obvious you’re not. The freedom of the press enshrined in our constitution was meant foremost as a protection for the people against the abuses of their own government. The most noble and appropriate act that any journalist can do is to relentlessly question every statement and policy his government is responsible for.
This reality escapes you so completely, that one wonders what country you actually live in. If you have a problem with the files being used against the US, then please prove your point. I’m sure youi’re out of practice in that regard, but recall your high school debating skills, probably the last time you dealt with an audience intelligent enough to respond to reason.
“The most noble and appropriate act that any journalist can do is to relentlessly question every statement and policy his government is responsible for.”
I look forward to the close questioning of all the health care cost estimates, all the stimulus spending, all the global temperature data collections…
So when we point out how the Obama Administration and it’s policies are one huge lump of historically proven fail you won’t call us racists, Gould?
“….the Obama Administration and it’s policies are one huge lump of historically proven fail you won’t call us racists….”
-Certainly John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are doing all they can to ensure a “proven fail”. The obstruction is doing its magic!
To bad partisan politics rule on the hill. No, I wouldn’t call you racist. But you seem to be supporting obstructionists.
But where Obama is a fail is in Afghanistan. It is clear from these documents that this war has been a fail for more than a few years.
At least three different terror networks are actively trying to kill us here in the US, and our soldiers in Afghanistan and you want to hold us to a pledge of transparency? Do I have that right? In a brutal war where we either wipe them out or they wipe us out?
Much of the burr in Miss Julien’s saddle has nothing to do with misconduct, war crimes or any of the other topics of his hysterical rants. He is being paid to undermine us. A rarity it is when a US soldier commits a crime with intent to do so. It happens, rarely. Mistakes do occur and because of the extremes in this war, they are not trumpeted to the world. Maybe they are covered up to save lives. It’s war, it’s dirty, it’s ugly.
Very little in the prosecution of the war should be public domain. We are not playing tiddley winks. It galls me that we are engaged with barbarians who have no ROE and we must play by the Marquis de Queensbury rules.
To whom is your comment directed. The United States Military?
Wikileaks into the wind and wets itself. Wait to see how long he lasts if he leaks anything on Putin. Send flowers.
Dirt Crashr is correct. Putin has killed Russian journalists before, even in other countries, so this wiki leaks guy will be greased if he tried to narc on the comrades up in the Kremlin.
Yeah, let’s cross our fingers and hope that a totalitarian ex-KGB will murder US citizens with whom we disagree.
Hey, genius, I am not rooting for this Wiki Leaks guy to get greased. Just saying he has to be careful. I’d say that to anybody who was publishing Russian info inconvenient for the Kremlin boss man. I wish that kind of violence on no man, and if you know anything about the Russians, you know that they *have* killed several journalists in the past several years — journalists who work the Russian angle, nothing to do with USA.
Does it not strike you as, uh, kinda silly when journalists, along with Hollywood stars, “speak truth to power” as though they are brave, courageous and bold? Yet they seem never to rip anyone other than America. Hmmm, have they noticed that “speaking truth to power” can actually be dangerous (actually requiring that the doer be brave, courageous and bold) if the “power” is a ruthless dictatorship? Or is it just that America is the only country they’re interested in ripping?
How about leaking Obama’s original birth certificate?
And while you’re at it, how about his college transcripts, and student loan documents?
Ask Orly Taitz. She’s got a dozen different versions of each.
And his adoption papers by his Indonesian step father.
And his writing while at the Harvard Law Review.
And his medical records (like every other president has released).
And his Indonesian school records.
It’s likely Julien’s “ethics” won’t include exposing any of the bad actors you mention.
He’s obviously into the fashionable, Leftist variety of exposure, American perfidy in Afghanistan, making America out to be the criminal, you know the drill.
Not to mention that much of what leaks through in Julien’s leaks is already pretty well known about Afghanistan, so he’s singing to the choir while preening in the mirror.
Another self-serving, self-righteous dweeb
Informants for the US/Afghan government are also named in those documents. When the Taliban murder those people and their families, including children, as we know they will, the blood of innocents is on the hands of Wikileaks as well. I hope the traitor and his enabled are both made fully aware of this when they are brought to justice.
This guys is almost certainly revealing secrets that will get Americans and Europeans killed. In other words, he is aiding and abetting terrorists, in his narcissistic belief that only he knows what’s right for the world, and the governments, soldiers and other people be damned.
This guy should be treated by the US as a terrorist assister, with everything that implies. Of course, the same goes for certain NY Times reporters who, under Bush, were happy to reveal intelligence methods.
Dealing in military secrets in time of war is called spying or treason. Both of these activities carry the death penalty in time of war.
Soldiers are dying for us. Why should these people who aid the enemy get away without penalty?
Last time I checked, nobody’s declared war. We haven’t declared war since 12/7/41, although we’ve fought in a few since. Declaring war gives the govt the power to take serious action, but it also makes it impossible to “declare victory and leave.” Besides, I don’t believe the govt wants war powers — then what excuse would they have for not doing anything? E.g., they tried Tokyo Rose after WW II for treason, but anybody think LBJ or Nixon had the balls to indict Jane Fonda?
“Last time I checked, nobody’s declared war. We haven’t declared war since 12/7/41, although we’ve fought in a few since. Declaring war gives the govt the power to take serious action, but it also makes it impossible to “declare victory and leave.”
The bad guy is a foreign national. We are already killing foreign nationals, so the fact that we haven’t “declared war” is irrelevant. Hell, we didn’t declare war in Vietnam either.
Good counter-stroke, Claudia. If this leaks guy is really in favor of sunlight, let him try obtaining even one page from those countries. It would be a whale of a challenge.
You clearly have no idea how wikileaks works. As such you should not talk. The leaked information is submitted to them, they do not go out looking. They simply provide a forum. How do you know they do not have information from those countries. Why dont you go look for yourself.
Which only further proves what a wussy Assange is. He calls himself a “journalist” but doesn’t go out and get the documents–he only sits at his computer and waits for others to risk their necks bringing him stuff. So he’s a wussy and not even a journalist to boot. Disgusting.
Assange claims to be a journalist. Good journalists do go out and find stories (take a bow Ms Rosett), they don’t wait for stories to come to them (most would starve if paid on results). Ms Rosett has exposed other regimes, by going and seeing – North Korean labor camps in Siberia (I know Siberia is in Russia, look up her stories yourself, fool), Libya torture, Chinese shooting their own (Rosett in Tiananmen – also well worth looking up), etc, etc.
No Brain, you are a fool!
Actually, you are right. I know JACK about wiki technology, other than one salient fact: it is a joke for serious information.
So, yes, I confess, I am not up on wikificational concepts. Call up young Ackerman and arrange my firing squad in front of his plate glass window. On my tombstone, you can chisel in my epitaph, “He died because Bush lied.”
As for the WIki Leaks guy, if it is true as you say that he just sits around waiting for others to ftp some files to him, then that makes him…. what? A public ombudsman? Perry White? Nerdopithecus amaricanensis?
He provides a space for people to leak information. Providing a space is important. That in itself does not make a person a journalist. However, that does not take away for the important contribution to society he is making. If it was a site that just posted leaked information from the Obama administration you would call them heroes.
Hey, thanks for reviewing the obvious. So handy.
But don’t assume you know JACK about what I would do or what I might think. Take your stereotypes elsewhere.
I am enraged and utterly disgusted. American soldiers and sources may be endangered or even killed because of this.
They’re already being killed. Maybe if some of the policy blunders of the past are brought to light, fewer of ours will die going forward.
Kids can rationalize like this too.
I’ll go you one better than that. Get out of Afghanistan tomorrow. Monitor their madness from the perimeter. Insert black ops intelligence teams. Assassinate terrorist leadership whenever possible. Wreak havoc on the poppy crop. Neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear capability.
I knew you’d be surprised.
“Neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear capability.
I knew you’d be surprised.”
Actually, no, I’m not surprised that you’d attack another nuclear-armed country. Nope, can’t see any way that could BLOW UP in our faces…
-That’s what I’m talking about. We’ve been there how long, and we get very little in the way of critical reporting so Americans can make an informed judgment about why we still have troops dying in Afghanistan.
How about Obama’s college and law school transcripts.
Yeah, clearly this is something worth putting time and energy into. We all know how much will change if the truth comes out that Obama got a c in some class . I do not understand why more people are not jumping on that bandwagon. We all know grades are equally important knowledge as governments breaking laws.
Nice try at diversion. If all he has to hide is a “C” in Freshman Composition or Property I, why hasn’t he released his college and law school transcripts? Odds are, there is something else in there he doesn’t want the world to see. I had to give my prospective employer a copy of my transcripts to get my job. Seems to me that giving the American public the same information would have been appropriate in order to get the job of President. But that is another little detail regarding which the Mainstream Media let him slide.
So, there’s nothing specific you’re suggesting is beneath this cloak of secrecy. But you’re convinced that whatever it is you haven’t seen is nefarious or embarrassing. What could it be that he doesn’t want the world to see? The right is full of allegations and supposition. Give it your best shot. You’ve already crossed over the line of objectivity, why stop now?
If Obama’s college transcripts were released and they revealed that he was a solid “C” student, then the questions we should be asking is “How did he transfer into Columbia?” and “How did get into Harvard Law School?”
Why? It might show he was an affirmative action student. How would that change anything at all? So you could make fun of him about that point? In what way is that productive? Wait of course, because it will show the Islamic conspiracy that got him into school at the age of 20 with the intent of rising him to power within the U.S. so he could be president and turn the country over to his Muslem puppet overlords. Wait, I though the had progressive overlords puppet masters.
“The truth will set you free.”
“So, there’s nothing specific you’re suggesting is beneath this cloak of secrecy.”
Will this wikileaks ever learn to put the seat up? And will this wikileaks ever tackle the phenomenon of Modern Liberal relative “truth” as put forth by its High Priests of The Moral Because We Say So.
What the hell, how does one tackle oneself?
An example of the Modern Liberal demanding purity of others while engaging in Lying beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. Notice that The Principal Liar sleazitz Persons Galore cannot bring itself to acknowledge its own months long barrage of blatant dishonesty.
There is the thought that it is somehow immune from the very actions that it condemns so loudly. Note that this is the salient trait of the Modern Liberal. Look around, you see it as the dominant theme of The Days of Their Modern Liberal Lives.
Who the hell is jeanneb? And Now and Then? And of course, All The “You Peoples”? No answer. Hey Liar, the answer is here –
skeeziks
“So, there’s nothing specific you’re suggesting is beneath this cloak of secrecy.”
July 26, 2010 – 7:43 pm
82. jeanneb:
“Hail Rush. Go Sarah!”
December 11, 2009
“You act like I’m trying to hide my identity,…”
30. skeeziks
“Hail Rush. Go Sarah!”
June 21, 2010 – 9:05 am
“You act like I’m trying to hide my identity,…”
233. Now and Then:
“Hail Rush. Go Sarah!”
Dec 5, 2009 – 7:03 am
Liar lies about lying –
skeeziks:
“You act like I’m trying to hide my identity,…”
Jan 28, 2010 – 3:06 pm
Comments on its own lying and a rare admission of its true station in life –
skeeziks
“…assigning ‘irony’ or’ ‘sarcasm’ to your own posts through a sock puppet in an attempt to deflect judgment for your juvenile post is, well, bad form.”
July 23, 2010 – 4:26 pm
Sock puppet? Just call it lying.
Was jeanneb the result of the failed wannabe jihadist underwear bomb proto test?
So you became jeanneb until Mr. President’s free health care kicked in (no pun intended).
And got the The Big Wish –
69. skeeziks:
“… a pair!
Jan 29, 2010 – 9:05 am
The Persons Galore unit Master Puppet gives some advice to the funhouse mirror –
18. Pastor of Muppets
“The truth will set you free.”
– John 8:32
July 26, 2010 – 3:04 pm
Mr. President still hasn’t “kicked some ass”. Are you in line with the Kick Me sign riveted to you ass in readiness?
Oh well, Boom! Clang!
Whatever.
I would LOVE to see WIKIleaks drop some damning info on the current political leadership of this country. I bet there are ppl standing in line at the DOJ and other departments who would love to leak things. But they will NEVER say anything bad about their messiah obama. If wikileaks wants to brag about exposing abuse of power, start showing the abuse the current administation has been doing since day 1
How about the ENTIRE comment history for Journolist? (a quick way to make $100K)
Or….. Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate?
Or….. the admission records for Barry Soetero’s admission to Muslim school in Indonesia
Or….. FBI background investigations for all of the White house staff and Obama’s political appointments
or….. I could go on and on and on …………
I read this today in NY Times. and I also read in Times that the people in this adminstration were happy that most of the leaked information was from President Bush’s time in the offfice..
Claudia: here is a question for you: would you have complained about wikileak, New Yorker, and the New Yrok times, had wikileak, leaked information aboyt president obamas thinking of the war in afghanistan. let me answer the question. Hell NO!!!! you would have been in cloud nine!!!
It is about leaking information that could endanger our soldiers. Understand Miriam, conservatives love this country and our soldiesr first and foremost. That is the concern, not polital games. You clearly will never understand true conservatives. This is not about a gotcha game.
I had a problem with it back when I thought it did include Obama era info.
How about leaking where all the TARP money went?
“The truth will set you free.”
– John 8:32
“The most noble and appropriate act that any journalist can do is to relentlessly question every statement and policy his government is responsible for.”
Platitudinous horsesh*t. Merely another version of the old canard that a journalist’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” the endemic rallying cry of (left-wing) “investigative” journalists seeking to justify their advocacy practices masquerading as objectivity.
Besides, if “relentlessly questioning” gov’t entities’ proclamations is journalism’s most sacred act, they’re sure revealing themselves to be quite un-pious when it comes to the current administration.
Tag various versions of the documents, and find the leaker. Put him/her in jail for 100 years, or turn them over to the Taliban just after a successful U.S. raid.
There comes a time in the life of every denizen of Top Secret America when you wonder what you’d do if you ran across a crime, improperly covered up by the veil of classification. There’s really only a handful of options.
(1) If you discover illegal activities, blow the whistle internally. Even the rookies know how to do this. It’s the right thing to do. You may need to resign, or make career changes, but if you got your clearance for the right reasons, then consider it as part of your duty to the Republic and move on. (If you’re just there for the paycheck, then why would you care about blowing the whistle anyway?)
(2) If you discover a crime so serious you don’t trust the whistle, then man up and take one for the team. Collect up the evidence, go public, turn yourself in and testify, knowing full well that jail and other indignities may await. It’s a lonely honor to put your neck on the chopping block and daring the Man to swing, but you must be so convinced of the rightness of your actions that you are willing to accept the consequences. If you’re going to violate your oaths, stand tall and explain why.
(3) If you leak truly sensitive information because you disagree with it, you want it changed but don’t want to get in trouble over it, then you are some varying combination of traitor and fool, and should hang by the neck until dead.
I think our young Specialist fits into the third category. In a wartime environment it can be a real rush to feel like a secret agent rockstar with Awesome Classified Secrets at your fingertips. Improperly taking that power into your own hands is no different that a cop with a gun blowing away a civilian he doesn’t like because he thinks he can get away with it. It’s an abuse of power loaned to you. If a cop has to pull the trigger and take a life (most never do), the cop should stand tall in court and explain why. Otherwise, he’s a criminal. Same logic applies.
If we’re not going to punish violations like this, we could save a lot of money, time and effort by not classifying information in the first place.
“If you leak truly sensitive information because you disagree with it,…..”
-in my experience, I was astounded by what passed as Top Secret. It was classified as such to keep the knowledge from the public. From the looks of it, most of this stuff was just embarrassing failures and screw ups. The pentagon Papers release helped push congress to force Nixon’s hand on ending that war. Hopefully these leaks will have the same effect on Obama.
When I had access to classified information, most of it was trivial. But *some* of it was kept secret for very, very good reasons. Some of it was, it turns out, fed by the Walker spy ring to the Russians, and many Americans died as a result.
If you don’t like the secrets that are kept by Americans legally operating under a democratically elected government, it doesn’t give you the right to turn them loose.
Leakers of classified documents are criminals. Publishers of those documents, if they damage national security, should also be criminals (SCOTUS disagrees). Foreign publishers of those secrets are simply enemies, to be dealt with accordingly.
It’s a rare occasion when acts such as these result in its intended end. Is there a time and place for “transparancy” &/or full disclosure? Sure, but one usually learns NOT to do so unless the recipient of any sensitive information has earned one’s absolute and unquestionable trust. Even then it has a good chance of coming back to bite you. That’s when you learn to keep your pie hole shut.
Then you turn 12, and you notice funny things are starting to happen to your body…
Good points all but it wouldn’t matter to the brain dead leftie, or worse, our Mr. Skumsuks rushing to the defense of his messiah. The email leaks from the CRU on the shenanigans of warmists and the big lie are proof that the brain dead left represented by “journolists” are only interested in one thing. Attacking America and all of western civilization that hasn’t fallen to the socialist scourge.
Cui bono?
With guys like Assange the Russians don’t need spies; he is handing them (and other enemies) everything on a silver-platter. A hypocrite and dangerous traitor.
Never happen. Wikileaks is a vanity project, not a suicide pact.
Given the overwhelming circumstantial evidence that is accumulating that Obama may be a Russian mole, groomed for decades for the role, the most significant omission in this list is the “KGB/SVR” files, etc, which would show the plans and handlers and conversations which prove it. Of course, Obama got rid of the 11 Russian spies who might have known something, only 2 weeks after Putin killed Sergei Tretyakov. I suppose we need the Israelis to take on the task of exposing Obama.
Don’t be silly, Obama is a North Korean agent.
Wikileaks only publishes what they’re given. The author of this article must be convinced that Wikileaks is secretly employing spies who are infiltrating governments or some such thing.
Hey Wikileaks, how about getting Obama’s grades, thesis, and activities during his college years at Columbia. Forget about the birth certificate, I want to see evidence that he’s so “smart”. So far it looks like the TOTUS is the smart one. Everyone knows every other prez’s grades etc for decades but somehow, just somehow, he’s never been held to that standard. I wonder why…
eaglesdontflock( from #1 at the top of the page)
“Even if Julian Assange was evenhanded in his whistle blowing, which he most definitely is not, he has made an ass out of himself with his petulant focus on the US military. He is obviously being paid well, but by whom. If he is going through this exercise for the good of mankind, he would dig into the brutal dictatorships, Chinese environmental degradation and human rights, Brazil, Darfur, Iran and every other pressing world problem with the same gusto. But he’s not. He is paid to focus on the US military by an activist with a grudge. Dot.dot.dot.
I would certainly love to see him jailed in a US military prison.
And Manning and others should be executed.”
-Assange collects leaks about BP’s operations as well. His web site is open to any one who has information that is withheld by ANY government or organization that is relevant to people understanding the world they live in. Is he paid? You could guess he is, but what is your evidence? Living in secrecy doesn’t sound like too much fun to me. Yes, you and a lot more people would like to silence him. This is suppose to be a free and open society. What is noteworthy to me is the video of operations in Iraq. The classified video of the AH-64 attack was telling. The radio transmission of the aircraft operator shows him making excuses about not bringing your kids to the fight. As an ex-soldier with combat experience, i could detect remorse in his voice. Shooting kids is not something any soldier wants to live with, but it stays with you.
I see our new crop of wounded warriors at my local VA hospital. They are reminders of the cost of these wars on our treasure. The public awareness of these wars are kept in the background by more compelling stories about Lady Gaga, or weather or not Tea Party members are racists. Julian Assange is attempting to refocus attention just where it should be. There was better focus on Vietnam than what we get from Iraq or Afghanistan.
Mr. Walters,
That Miss Julian collects information about BP is not germane to this discussion. Even the CIA use fronts. Outside of the fact that I have skin in the game, my problem with this effete excuse for a person is his methods and his motivation. For an outlandish example, he could have taken his concerns to people who could be trusted to vet the documents and prevent the exposure of innocent people.
His calculation to sensationalize an act of war, ramp up the negative rhetoric, cherry pick events and deliver his spoils to leftist media brands him as a mercenary in the hire of a despot. The 2007 Iraq video, ugly as it was, depicted what happens to terrorists bent on killing American soldiers and the persons who accompany them. It’s shock value is only for people who haven’t seen war and have been mislead by the rhetoric.
This is a calculated political event, not a genuine antiwar stance.
Claudia won’t post my reply’s, darn it!
The White House is not a trusted entity to review the documents for sensitivity, obviously. They could care less what damage these documents do.
The terrible rules of engagement for our military in Afghanistan are meant to help prevent accidental killings of Afghan civilians by U.S. and Allied military forces. The reason why there are these terrible rules of engagement is that as far as war policy is concerned,the Obama administration doesn’t care if Afghan civilians are killed as long as they are murdered on purpose by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. This is what happens when enemy militants aren’t killed under the rules of engagement, since our military forces aren’t allowed to kill the militants. Our military forces themselves are often killed by the enemy militants, because of the terrible rules of engagement. This is what happens when a government formulates national security policy based on political considerations. Obama is only worried about his radical left political base, which screams bloody murder if our military forces kill only 1 Afghan civilian, but don’t say much of anything if the Taliban and Al Qaeda kill 100 Afghan civilians.
Obama’s political base is sure to eat up these leaked classified documents. But you can be sure that his radical left political base wouldn’t react the same to any leaked classified documents belonging to Iran or any other authoritarian regime. Remember Obama’s reaction to the protests against Iran’s fraudulent presidential election and the resulting crackdown by the brutal Iranian regime.
What about leaking of the identity of an undercover operative named Valerie Plame? Is that encouraged as well? I like how Claudia points the finger left so quickly. Claudia, Claudia, Claudia… be a serious journalist for once and not a partisan hack.